GNM had hardly put the finishing touches to its company-wide reorganisation plan to make us fit for the digital revolution when the recession struck. This has forced us to take another hard look at the organisation, given that we are having to cut more than £20m in costs to cope with the collapse in advertising revenue.

All of the decisions being taken are intended to minimise the impact on employees, although staff cuts have been unavoidable. As always, GNM has concentrated on voluntary redundancies and the non-replacement of those already leaving the company.

Managing director Tim Brooks stresses that budget reductions have been agreed with departments rather than being imposed on them. "We have not imposed blanket percentage reductions. We have asked each area of the business to come forward with their proposals and in each case these have been respected.

"The market conditions do take their toll and one of the things I have been trying to amplify during this period are our community projects because the danger is that people feel rather woebegone, which is understandable during these difficult times.

"Our community projects are a very rapid and immediate reminder of just how fortunate we typically are compared with large numbers of people who live very close to the building."

While falling morale is a fact of life during difficult economic times, Brooks says this has been mitigated by our move to spacious new offices in King's Cross. A survey of staff six months after the move shows an improvement on all the measures they described as important.

Two main complaints at Kings Place concerned the canteen and the post, which are being addressed. At our smaller refurbished Herbal Hill offices, which houses some of our commercial staff, there were complaints about the absence of a canteen, and bike security, the second of which was resolved.

The last company-wide employee survey took place during the 2008 reorganisation and showed that despite the upheaval, the majority of staff understood the need for change and that it had not dented their enormous pride in working for GNM. The results of the 2009 survey came too late to include in this publication but will be available on our sustainability website at guardian.co.uk/sustainability by the autumn.

The last survey highlighted four areas of weakness – appraisals, recruitment, career progression, and fairness and consistency in the way we pay and reward staff – and the board has been working hard to make improvements in each of these.

Targets 2009-10

1. Appraisals: 80% of commercial and 25% of editorial staff to be appraised by December 2009.

Targets 2008-9

Future gazing

Our ownership by the Scott Trust gives us the ability to plan for the longer term and therefore withstand the short-term pressures being faced by our stockmarket listed competitors. This not only allows us to mitigate the need to cut our budgets in a knee-jerk fashion but also to keep our gaze on the far horizon.

In honour of this, in June 2009 we launched Guardian 2020, choosing 50 middle managers, from across the business, whom we asked to envisage what this organisation will look like in 10 years' time.

Tim Brooks says that "part of that was to look back and to see how very different things were 10 years ago. Our website had only just been launched, Google had only eight staff, and the euro launched with most predicting an early demise for the currency. This goes to show how rapid change is and it felt important during these difficult times to have a beacon to navigate by."